ESPN stands for East coaSt PuNks. The description on my idiot box of SportsCenter states the following: An Emmy-winning daily scrapbook of homers, slam dunks, and touchdowns. I think it’s more like this (in no particular order):

Baseball: Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Jeter, A-Rod, Papi, Manny, Beltran

Football: T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., Patriots, Brady, Belichick, G-Men, Tiki, Strahan, Jets, Pennington, Philly, McNabb, Vick, Big Ben, T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O., T.O. The ought to just play the dam the TO song

Basketball: Knicks, Sixers, Iverson, Shaq, Wade, Kobe, LeBron, Melo, Carter, Duncan, KG, state of the Knicks, T-Mac

College Basketball: Duke, UNC. Nothing else

College Football: Florida State, Thug U, Notre Dame, USC, Texas, SEC. They don’t even discuss Michigan-OSU. It’s only America’s # 1 rivalry

Why can’t they cover the Cubs, Bulls, Bears, and Buckeyes more??

“I think walks are overrated unless you can run. If you get a walk and put the pitcher in a stretch, that helps, but the guy who walks and can’t run, most of the time he’s clogging up the bases for somebody who can run.

“Who have been the champions the last seven, eight years? Have you ever heard the Yankees talk about on-base percentage and walks? Walks help. They do help. But you aren’t going to walk across the plate, you’re going to hit across the plate. That’s the school I come from.

“It’s like when I see kids in Little League and they make the small kids go up there and try to get a walk. That’s not any fun. Do you ever see the top 10 walking (rankings)? You see top 10 batting average. A lot of those top 10 do walk, but the name of the game is to hit.” – Dusty Baker.

WOW is all I can say to that!! Is he serious?? I nearly fell out of my chair reading that. First off, if walks clog the bases, then how come singles don’t?? How is Big Papi [David Ortiz] (a guy who can’t run) going to clog the bases if he’s on first base via walk, but not clog the bases if he’s on first via single? It makes no sense to me.

Dusty must be cut from the same cloth as Tim McCarver, who also believes a slow guy with a high OBP clogs the bases. In The Book, written by Tom M. Tango, Mitchel G. Litchman, and Andrew E. Dolphin, they discuss the art of base-clogging, using a slow player like Papi:

“Ortiz will be on first base 150 to 200 times in a season. Take a fast runner like [Coco] Crisp. Crisp will hit a single about 18% of the time, and probably 85% of those times, Ortiz will remain on 2B. Crisp will take a walk only 7% of the time. So, 22% (.18 * .85 + .07 = .22) of the time that Ortiz is on 1B, we’ll be in a Ortiz/2B, Crisp/1B situation. That’s 40 times where we’ve set ourselves up for possible base-clogging.

“The base-clogging will happen in situations where Crisp can go to 3B, but Ortiz isn’t going to try for home, so he’s staying on 3B. So, at the minimum, it has to be a single. A hitter will get a single 17% of the time, meaning 7 times we have the minimum requirements (.17 * 40). Of those 7 times, Ortiz will score 2-3 times and stay at 3B 4-5 times, meaning that the trailing runner will be stuck at 2B 2-3 times.

“Crisp would probably have made it to 3B, sans base-cloggers, 3-4 times. So, the base-clogging Ortiz would block the speedy Crisp one time per season.

So, yes, McCarver was right. It is possible for a slow runner to clog the bases for a faster runner. One base for the season; that’s the cost.”

This is a great analysis of it, and I would also like to point out that Manny Ramirez, another slow runner, usually bats behind Papi in the Red Sox lineup. Most team’s slow runners tend to be mashers hitting in the 3-4-5-6 spots in the lineup. The 7-8-9 hitters don’t tend to be that good at the plate, so clogging the bases for them is in some ways a moot point. Your leadoff hitter you want to be a speed burner who gets on base a lot, so he’s not going to be clogging the bases for your 2 hitter, who tends to be someone who puts the ball in play a lot and has some speed. So on top of the fact that this analysis shows that 1 base will be clogged a year, it is also unrealistic based on how the “ideal” lineup is constructed.

Furthermore, I want to know why if taking walks is so bad, then why is it also so bad when his pitchers give them up?? The Cubs pitching staff gave up a lot of walks in 2006, something that would get them pulled from games frequently. Why is it bad for a hitter to take a walk, yet at the same time, it’s bad for a pitcher to give up a walk?? Doesn’t make any sense to me. I would think that allowing a walk is good under this philosophy. NOT.

The last 7, 8 years, the Yankees, Diamondbacks, Angels, Marlins :-(, Red Sox, White Sox :-(, and Cardinals have been the champions to answer the question. They won with good pitching, but they were also in the upper portion of teams in OBP and walks. And it turns out, I HAVE heard the Yankees talk about walks and OBP, and they tend to value OBP more than batting average. How do you score runs if people don’t get on base? The Yankees were 3rd in the league in walks in 2006, with 649, only 23 behind the archrival Boston Red Sox. Also, they were 1st in team OBP, at .363 in 2006.

Walks help?? They help a lot more than Dusty is letting on. They help immensely. They run up the pitch counts, they keep the defense on the field longer, and runners on base open up holes on the field for the batter, because the defense has to hold the runner, they help in more ways than having that guy on base. But that’s right. Dusty has no regard for pitch counts, either. You can’t walk across home?? Really?? If my memory serves me right, the 1999 NLCS ended on a base-loaded walk. Numerous times when I played baseball, I got walked with the bases loaded. When the Cubs swept the cross-town rival White Sox in the 2004 series at Wrigley, it ended on a bases-loaded walk. The rules clearly say you can walk across the plate. Does this guy take stupid pills or what?

Dusty obviously hasn’t coached Little League for a while. When I played, I was one of the smaller guys on the team. They didn’t make me go up and take a walk. They never did. I never hit for power, because I wasn’t a big guy, but I was never forced to go up and take a walk. I played for 3 years, and they told all the hitters not to swing at any bad pitches, don’t try to force anything, and if a pitcher gives you nothing to hit, just take the walk. And walking is fun. I would rather be on base than taking a left or right turn back to the dugout.

Turns out, I do see a top 10 walks rankings every year. What a coincidence that the leaders in average also tend to be leaders in walks. NOT!! Because of their discipline at the plate, they are among the leaders in average. They don’t swing at bad pitches, which allows them to keep at-bats going to the point where they can get a good pitch to hit, something else my Little League coaches always told me. On top of all this, he managed the all-time leader in walks, Barry Bonds, when he was in San Francisco. Steroids aside, Bonds must be doing something right. Dusty needs to get off the stupid pills.

Dusty Baker is horrible. All this guy does is make excuses. He is a horrible manager. He has ruined Kerry Wood and Mark Prior forever. I am shocked he didn’t destroy Carlos Zambrano. It’s a wonder he still has an arm, let alone a healthy arm.

He handles pitchers horribly. In addition to destroying Wood and Prior, his abuse of pitchers has ended Rob Nenn’s and Chad Fox’s careers prematurely. He has no regard for pitch counts. In 2003, Wood and Prior were 1-2 in pitches thrown. Prior was only 240 behind Wood, and he missed 3 starts that year. Zambrano was 7th that year also.

He also does not like to give young players a fair chance. He puts them in position to fail, and he unfairly passes them over in favor of unproductive veterans who have “earned” it b/c of what they have done in the past. He plays kids some, yes, but he still found a way to get Neifi Perez 236 at-bats in 87 games w/ the Cubs this season and 572 AB in 153 games last year. Way too many. Dusty only played a lot of kids AFTER his hand was forced due to injuries.

Neifi is good to give a guy a day off here or there, and for late-innings defense. He gives stupid reasons for playing veterans over young players even when his teams are out of it, saying last September that he “had to play veterans” to “maintain the integrity of the post-season races.”

His ideas on hitting are just absurd. He does not value walks and disregards OBP. He believes that walks clog the bases for guys who can run. Can someone explain to me how walks clog the bases, but singles don’t?? He believes great hitters are wild swingers. This, despite the fact he managed Barry Bonds for 10 years in SF, the all time leader in walks.

He is an incompetent manager. Do not be fooled by his record or his 3 manager of the year awards. He won in SF b/c of the talent he had, same in Chicago his 1st 2 years. When Derrek Lee went down, he just moved Todd Walker over to 1st base, put him in Lee’s spot in the lineup, and put Neifi where Walker usually was, batting and playing 2nd. He said Aramis Ramirez would have to step up and be “the man”. Well he never got the chance to be “the man.” He just played the injury card, saying “I need my horses.” He never addressed the issue of winning without his stars. Good managers find a way to win even w/ injuries to marquee personal.

I understand there is nothing you can do about Lee getting hurt, nor is there any way you can plan for it. I also understand you can’t call up your top 2 1B prospects b/c 1 has a broken foot, and the other is stinking it up. Fine. But Jerry Hairston was on the bench. He could have come in, played 2B, and the Cubs could have been more of a scrap team like the 2003 Marlins were. The only major power on that team was Mike Lowell, and some from Pudge and Lee. When Lowell went down, the Marlins didn’t whine. They kept winning. They found a way to get Miguel Cabrera on the field and get his bat in the lineup, and Lee stepped up as well. Maybe you find a way to get Felix Pie on the field so you can have his bat. Maybe convert him to 1B or move Jones or Murton there. The point is, the Cubs could have kept winning w/o Lee, but Dusty just used it as an opportunity to play Neifi.

And while Lee was out, players like Jacque Jones were not performing. Dusty kept batting him ahead of Matt Murton and Ronny Cedeno, b/c Murton and Cedeno are the kids, and Jones is the veteran, even though Murton and Cedeno were doing better than Jones. He has no regard for riding the hot bat if the player is young. If it were Neifi or Jones, he’d have “earned” a week in the lineup. The double-standard he has is clear.

With Lee gone, his lineup should have been like this:

1. Pierre – CF
2. Walker – 1B
3. Ramirez – 3B
4. Barrett – C
5. Murton – LF
6. Cedeno – SS
7. Jones – RF
8. Hairston – 2B

His double-standards extend to the rotation as well. With Wood and Prior injured, the Cubs had to go w/ a makeshift rotation. Big Z and Mad Dog were the only constants. Sean Marshall was an amazing success when starting the season in the rotation. That left the final 2 spots to be rounded out by Glendon Rusch and a bunch of kids from the minors.

All of them were inconsistent. One good outing would keep the kids up until they got roughed up. Rusch would “earn” 3-4 starts if he did good. Yes, Jim Hendry did not give him much to work with, but in any sport, in order for young players to develop, you have to let them play thru their struggles/mistakes. Dusty has shown he will not do that. All he’s concerned about is winning immediately, even when a season is lost.

His act is tired, his ideas are stupid, his rationale is irrational. He should never be a manager again. Winning does not make you an automatic success. Being named Manager of the Year does not make you an automatic success. Dusty is not a success. His faults outweigh his strengths. He is a horrible manager.